


Wouldn’t Risk You for the World

by zeldadestry



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: BtVS season 5, Community: 100_women
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-15
Updated: 2013-05-15
Packaged: 2017-12-11 23:47:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/804644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeldadestry/pseuds/zeldadestry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Buffy wishes, suddenly, that Spike were here.  She wants him to realize that he and Dru weren’t so special, after all. They were just a couple more deluded vampires, pretending they can love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wouldn’t Risk You for the World

**Author's Note:**

> This was begun years ago, when BtVS was still in first-runs, but only finished now!   
> "Sister", prompt 054, for 100_women fanfic challenge

Buffy shouldn’t be at the Bronze, not really. Yeah, she’s looking good, and they’re playing the right songs tonight, no band, just a DJ, and she could be out on the dance floor, shaking her ass, but instead she’s just slumped in the corner of a couch while she watches Willow and Tara get down, drinking a soda she wishes were something stronger.

She thinks she notices him at first because he’s so hot. Tall and pale, with his dark hair slicked back, he’s showing off slim pants, a narrow tie, and a closely tailored navy blue sport coat. Her heart’s racing by the time the inevitable realization strikes. He dresses like vintage Sinatra because he probably ran with the frickin rat pack and has been working that style ever since. 

She picks her purse up off the floor and rummages through it. A well sharpened stake is every Slayer’s best friend. She slips her weapon into the pocket of her jacket and stands, figures she’ll lure him outside to dust him. She starts in his direction but a woman in the crowd reaches him first and throws her arms around him. She’s gorgeous, with generous curves and lush lips, but how can Buffy be jealous when her pick up’s a vamp? They head towards the back door together, the one that leads to the darkest alley, and Buffy rolls her eyes. What is it with people fooling around out there? Hello, skanky desperation. She’s almost to the door when she feels a tug at her sleeve and turns around to see Willow shaking a finger at her. “What’s with the ditching of us? You haven’t danced once!”

Tara grabs Buffy’s hand and does a little shimmy which is endlessly endearing in its goofiness. “Please dance with us? Please?”

Buffy thumbs towards the exit. “Vamp. Slayer time.”

Tara lets go of her. “Be careful.”

Buffy sees a touch of fear in Tara’s eyes. She’s not used to that. Everyone else knows she can handle this, that it’s her job. “Hey, this is nothing, trust me.” 

It’s drizzling outside and the air’s moist. Buffy hears voices, follows them around the corner of the building, and, there they are, already getting down. The woman’s blouse is yanked open and the vamp’s nuzzling his face between her bare breasts. “God, yeah,” she moans, and one of her hands wraps around the back of his neck, keeping him close. Buffy feels her own lips start to swell as he tongues at a nipple, and slides his hand up underneath her skirt. When he pulls his mouth away the woman whimpers. “Don’t stop,” she pleads. 

“Have to. Want to look at you.” His hand’s moving so slowly between their bodies, and the woman’s hips keep rocking up towards him, and Buffy’s not sure what’s hotter to her, watching him get her off or watching her get off. “Always want to look at you,” he says, cupping her cheek with his free hand.

“Why?” she says, in between gasps for breath. She must be getting close and he knows it, too, stops the tease and quickens the pace.

“God,” he says, tangling his fingers in her hair and pulling her head back so her chin lifts up. “Your eyes.” She doesn’t speak, just whimpers in response. “They’re so dark, so beautiful.” He leans down and kisses her, licks and sucks at her mouth until she’s shaking, crying out as she comes. “How could anyone look you in the eyes and not want you?” She’s trembling and he holds her steady as she recovers. 

Buffy wishes, suddenly, that Spike were here. She wants him to realize that he and Dru weren’t so special, after all. They were just a couple more deluded vampires, pretending they can love. The couple start kissing again and, as soon as the woman reaches for the guy’s belt, Buffy knows it’s time to make her move. “I hate to break this up-” she says, walking towards them. 

They turn to her in unison, surprised, but fear crosses their features when Buffy raises the stake. The woman backs up against the man, protecting his body with her own. “You don’t understand,” she stammers. “This isn’t what it looks like.”

Buffy points to them, enunciates each syllable, like they’re wasted. “Vampires.” Points to herself. “Slayer.”

“I’m not a vampire!” the woman says. 

Buffy shrugs. “Then you better get out of the way.” The guy’s not looking to run, not yet, but with the woman between them Buffy’s not within staking distance. “Get out of the way!” she orders. 

“We’ve done nothing wrong,” the vamp says. “So why don’t you just move it along, Slayer?”

“Nothing wrong? Tonight, maybe, but when were you turned?” He glares at her. “Let me guess, late nineteen fifties, early sixties, maybe?” 

His eyes widen. “How did you-?”

“You guys really need to update your wardrobes.” 

“Vintage is cool,” he protests.

Buffy wrinkles her nose. “And sometimes reeks of moth balls.” She curls her hand tighter around the stake. “Alright, GQ, time to die.”

“I’ll fight,” he warns her.

“Duh,” she says, rolling her eyes.

The woman starts to cry as Buffy advances on them. “You can’t hurt him, please, please don’t do this.”

Buffy can’t believe she’s gonna need to offer talk therapy to get this vamp slayed. “Listen to me,” she says, looking the woman straight in the eye. “He may be good to you, but he is evil. He literally has no soul. You can’t trust him. If you stay with him, he will turn on you. He will kill you.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Slayer,” the vamp says.

“You don’t understand,” the woman says, holding out a hand, still warding Buffy off. “I love him. I’ve never loved anyone else.” 

Her plea is so raw, that Buffy pauses, despite her intention. She can remember caring like this, a passion that had nothing to do with common sense, or duty, or anything logical and right. She’s known that want, and she can’t lie to herself and say that what she saw between them was just lust and sex haze. The whole reason she stood there and watched like a perv was because she recognized, in all their touches and murmurs, that they’re each other’s single most important thing. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I really am.” It’s easy, physically, to pull them apart, and to shove the woman aside, but she’s distracted by her own emotional response and underestimates her strength. The woman gets knocked off balance and tumbles to the ground.

“You get off on beating up the innocent, Slayer?” 

The vamp aims a punch at Buffy’s face but she ducks it. “No.” She darts a glance at the woman. Her hands and knees are bleeding. There must’ve been broken glass on the pavement where she fell. 

“You’ve hurt her.” The man’s voice slurs, thick with his anger.

This time, his punch lands, right to her throat. Buffy staggers back, needs a moment to regain her breath, and that’s all it takes. He races off, fast enough that she knows she wouldn’t catch him, not when he had that head start. “Damn it,” she hisses. She walks to the woman and bends over to help her up. The woman clings to her, shaking. “Hey, are you ok?” 

The woman reaches out her hand and brushes the back of it across Buffy’s cheek. “Thank you,” she whispers. “Thank you.” 

“This isn’t over,” Buffy says, jerking back from her touch. It’s too much like a blessing and nothing she deserves. “You get that, right? Sunnydale’s not a big town. You stay here and I’m gonna run into him again. In fact, I’m gonna be looking for him, now. And, when I do see him again, it’s not gonna go down like it did tonight. I’m going to kill him.” She grabs the woman by the elbow and steers her to the Bronze’s nearest door. “You should go back inside. I’m pretty sure they’ve got a first aid kit there.” 

 

“Hey, Giles?” Buffy says, pushing away the antique book she was only pretending to read in the first place. “It’s pretty unusual, right, for humans to have vampire boyfriends or girlfriends?” 

He raises his eyebrows. “Present company excluded, I assume?”

Buffy groans. “Of course. Geez, a girl dates one vamp and she never hears the end of it. Anyway, I’m the Slayer. Not exactly 100 percent human, am I?”

“You’re human. Superhuman, yes, but human all the same.” He gives her what he no doubt intends as a reassuring smile, then turns back to the text in front of him. “Though no doubt an interesting topic of discussion, I don’t see how this will help us defeat Glory.”

Buffy slumps further down in her seat. The memory of the badly botched encounter is distracting her and that’s not good. “There’s this woman, in Sunnydale, and her vampire’s a boyfriend.”

“What?”

“I mean her boyfriend’s a vampire.”

“Ah.”

“It’s true. I saw it. I mean, I saw them, together.” She blushes at that, the image right in front of her for a moment. “So it’s uncommon, right?”

Giles gives a slight nod. “Rare, yes, undoubtedly. But unheard of? No.” He stares into space. “There must be, for some people, a very strong attraction, to risk so much, their own lives. Their souls. Very strong, indeed.”

“Great,” Buffy says. “Fabulous.” Somehow she feels worse than before. 

 

When the article and photograph appear in the paper, Buffy can’t even do more than glance at them. Ok, well, she knew it was gonna go this way, right? She knew it was only a matter of time. Still, she feels sick, and holds tightly to the railing as she goes upstairs for some pepto to calm her stomach. 

 

Although her investigation proves that the woman’s death was not caused by blood loss, she tracks the vamp down with Spike’s help the following night. “What’s he doing?” she asks, looking through his front window as they stand outside the small house he lives in.

“He’s reading, blondie,” Spike drawls. “Might wanna try it sometime.”

“I know he’s reading, I mean why would a vamp do that?”

“I read all the time.”

“Yeah, but you have a chip.”

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. I’ve been reading my whole life. Human, vamp, doesn’t matter.”

“Angel reads, but he has a soul.”

“Getting turned doesn’t make you illiterate, Buffy.”

“So you feel the same way now, when you read, as you did then?”

“Then?”

“I mean- when you were human.”

Spike frowns. “What are you getting at?”

She doesn’t know how to explain the question that clings to her, taunting her in its variations. Why didn’t she kill him in that alley, why didn’t she chase after him, why didn’t she hunt him down as soon as possible? Did she let herself believe, even for a moment, even after everything she’s seen, that he could possibly be different? 

“Why are we here, Buffy?” Spike says.

“He’s a vampire. I’m the Slayer.”

“Yeah. Thanks for the update.” Spike shakes his head. “Has all the peroxide finally eaten away your brain?”

“Hey, I could say the same to you! And I plan to, the next time you say something dumb.” The vamp closes his book, stares into space. Buffy wonders if he’s thinking about her, his girlfriend. “You know, for sure, right, that he hunts?”

“All vamps do.”

“You don’t. I mean, you can’t.” She locks eyes with him. “Angel doesn’t.”

“But we both have, and that’s what matters.” He turns his gaze back towards the house. “Why are we even talking about this?”

“He, the vamp, ummm, he had a human girlfriend.”

“It wasn’t, by any chance...you?”

She smacks him on the arm. “Not funny.” The vamp places the book aside and gets up from his chair. “Ok. I’m going in.” Spike falls in step beside her. “Back off. I’ll let you know if I need backup.” 

“Stay focused, Slayer.”

“I am.” She yanks at his arm and twists it behind his back. “Who’s the best Slayer in the world?”

He winces. “You are, apparently.”

“And don’t you forget it.” She drops his arm. “Ok. Stay here, and don’t move unless I scream for you.” He smirks at her. “Um, that didn’t come out right.” He snickers at the word come and she sighs in exasperation. “God, you’re such a child, shut up.” 

She circles the house, intending to enter through the back door, and pulls up short, stake in hand, when she sees the vamp standing under the porch light. “Are you here to answer your calling?” he asks, his arms at his side, hands curled into fists, not hiding his intention to challenge her. 

“Yes, I’m here to slay you.” He steps off the porch, slowly making his way towards her. “You look like shit.” 

“Only fair.”

“What do you mean?”

“I feel like shit.”

“I saw- in the paper, about your girlfriend. I’m sorry.”

He turns his face away from her but she sees a shudder work its way down his spine. “I didn’t do it,” he murmurs. 

“I know.”

“Then why-” his eyes fix on her but she keeps her expression blank, gives nothing away. He watches her for a long moment before he laughs. “But she’s gone, now, so there’s no longer a reason for you to stay my execution.”

“That’s right.”

He kneels in the overgrown grass and weeds of the lawn and at first she thinks that he’s offering himself, that he’s going to make this easier for both of them, but then he stands again, holding the crowbar he picked up in both hands. “I’m not going without a fight.”

Buffy shrugs. “That’s pretty much what I expected.” He swings the crowbar at her, but she dodges it. They spar, and within a few minutes Buffy can tell she’s wearing him down, that he’s getting tired. After one of her punches he cries out and falls to his knees. “Did I pop your kidneys, huh?” She’s ready to finish this, but it’s just when she thinks she’s won that shit gets messy. As soon as she’s in reach he grabs her around the legs, drags her down to the ground with him. He snarls as they wrestle, swings an elbow that hits her directly in the temple, blurring her vision, and shit, yeah, she’s worried now. 

“You should’ve killed me when you had the chance,” the vampire says, pinning her beneath him.

She should call for Spike, she knows that, but she’s not sure she can put up with all the crap he’s gonna give her, how fuckin smug he’ll be that she needed his help. She writhes under the vamp, almost manages to buck him off. 

“Buffy!” Spike shouts, and she can hear him sprinting towards her. For once she’s glad that he spends so much time watching her. Spike grabs the vamp and wrenches him off of her. He holds the vamp’s arms back, so that his chest is displayed to her, as open a target as possible. “Now, Slayer!” he orders, while the vamp struggles in vain. 

Buffy lifts her hand and brings it down as swiftly and forcefully as she has so many times before. When the point of the stake enters his body, the vamp face suddenly vanishes, leaving behind his human face, and she cringes, watches something that looks like a person explode into nothing. For a moment, she thinks she might retch. Once she’s pulled herself together, Spike’s still brushing the dust off of his leather. “Let’s go,” she says, and walks towards the street, hoping it’s not obvious that she’s in pain. 

“You’re limping,” Spike says, when he reaches her side. “You need some help.” He holds out his arm to her, but she ignores him, just focuses on walking home. God, she wants to get home. 

 

They walk back in silence and, as they round the corner and are nearly there, close enough to see that the tv is on in the living room, Spike says, “Are you gonna tell me what the hell that was about?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Something about that vamp obviously got under your skin.”

Buffy looks at him when they reach her porch. Why is it that, in the late night, which is supposed to be their element, they look their most human? In the dark he looks less menacing to her, more like a real person. “Not at all,” she says.

She sees in his face that he wants to call her out on her bullshit but instead he simply shrugs. “You owe me.” 

“Yeah, yeah, thanks for your help.” He nods, gives her a friendly tap on the shoulder, and heads off down the street, turning to wave at her as he turns the corner, right before he swaggers out of sight. 

It’s chilly, but she sits on the front steps for a few minutes, trying to decide how badly she failed because she felt sympathy for the girlfriend. She, understood, damn it, and although she might’ve been willing to kill her own vamp boyfriend to save the world, she couldn’t bring herself to do it to someone else. 

She avoids over-thinking most things, prefers to let action be her everything, because there’s no fine print for a Slayer, no real guidance about what it means to balance the pain of many with the pain of one. She’s not a god, but does she sometimes play one? And, if she does, how can she be sure that what she decides is good? 

Stepping inside, she finds Dawn asleep on the couch. She closes the front door and locks it as quietly as she can, but Dawn rolls over, waking up. Buffy walks into the living room, looks at her groggy, disheveled sister, at the purple juice stain above her upper lip, at the bag of potato chips and carton of cookies on the coffee table. 

“Buffy, hey.” Dawn rubs at her face, frowning. 

“What’s wrong, are you ok?” Dawn shakes her head, eyes watering, and Buffy bends down to wrap her arms around her, envelop her in a strong hug. 

“I was dreaming about mom,” Dawn whimpers. “She was in the kitchen, making us dinner, lasagna. We were setting the table because she asked us. I was dressed like a ballerina. And you had wings.” She lets out a small sob. 

Buffy can’t hear that gasp of pain without making herself a solemn promise: she will do anything, anything, to protect her sister. For just a moment there’s a stab in her gut, some terrible realization that flits past the edge of consciousness and disappears.

The whole fucking world can go to hell; she will never let Dawn be hurt.


End file.
